In Conversation with Renee Beren
Tell us about your background:
My background sits at the intersection of ecommerce, digital marketing, and brand growth, with experience across enterprise retail, DTC, and founder-led beauty and wellness brands. I started my career at Walmart Global Ecommerce, which gave me an incredible foundation in digital merchandising, content, operations, and the complexity of scaling a massive online assortment. That early experience taught me the importance of strong systems, clean execution, and understanding how customers navigate and shop online.
From there, I moved deeper into ecommerce and digital growth across consumer products, apparel, and wellness. At Hyland’s Naturals, I expanded my experience across DTC, Amazon, Walmart.com, and Target.com. That role helped me understand how brand-led ecommerce and retail ecommerce need to work together, especially when customers are discovering, comparing, and purchasing across multiple platforms.
I then joined Ariat, where I focused on wholesale ecommerce and digital marketing. That experience broadened my view of the digital landscape from the retail side, giving me a deeper understanding of how brand storytelling, product content, merchandising, and digital performance come together across major wholesale partners.
My move into beauty and aesthetics has been the most defining chapter of my career. At NuFACE, I led ecommerce across the DTC site, mobile app, and TikTok Shop, with responsibility across acquisition, site experience, lifecycle, technology, and cross-functional digital execution. It was an exciting opportunity to work with a founder-led beauty brand at the intersection of product education, performance marketing, retail momentum, and digital transformation.
More recently, I continued building my niche in founder-led beauty and wellness brands through my work with Violet Grey, TONE, and Filament Sciences. At Violet Grey, I led ecommerce across performance marketing, CRM, paid and organic social, content, digital design, UX, and UI, while managing internal team members and agency partners. It gave me the opportunity to bring together the luxury beauty customer experience with the operational rigor needed to drive growth.
Through consulting roles with TONE and Filament Sciences, I’ve been able to support emerging brands through key moments of launch, positioning, digital infrastructure, and growth strategy. I especially enjoy working with founder-led brands because there is often a deep emotional connection to the product, a strong point of view, and a real opportunity to help translate that vision into a scalable digital business.
Across my career, I’ve developed a rare perspective from both the retail and brand-led sides of ecommerce. I understand the importance of storytelling, but also the operational details that make digital growth work: site experience, conversion, lifecycle marketing, merchandising, analytics, and cross-functional execution. Today, I see my niche as helping founder-led beauty and wellness brands grow with clarity, creativity, and a strong commercial foundation.
What do you wish you’d known when you started out?
I wish I had known earlier that discomfort is not a sign that you are in the wrong place. Often, it is a sign that you are growing.
When you are starting a new role, joining a new team, or learning a new skill, it can feel overwhelming at first. Early in my career, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to have the answer right away. Over time, I learned that no one is an expert at the beginning, and the people who grow the fastest are usually the ones who are willing to ask questions, listen closely, take feedback, and keep moving forward even when something feels unfamiliar.
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable has been one of the most important lessons in my career. That is usually where confidence, resilience, and real growth are built.
Best career advice you've ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is simple: know how to show up.
It is really a distilled version of advice I’ve received from my father, mentors, managers, and colleagues over the years. My dad always said, “If you’re on time, you’re late,” and that stuck with me. I remember showing up five minutes early to the final round of interviews for my dream job. The CGO arrived shortly after and immediately noticed that I was already there. It was a small moment, but I do think it helped signal how seriously I was taking the opportunity.
To me, showing up is about more than being on time. It is about preparation, presence, and care. It means coming into important meetings, interviews, and presentations looking polished, knowing your material, having your notes ready, and making it clear that you took the time to be thoughtful. Those details may seem small, but they compound over time.
Showing up as your best self, however you define that, can make a huge difference in your career.
What leadership qualities are important to you?
The leadership qualities that are most important to me are openness, collaboration, and inclusivity.
I’ve always believed that people are more motivated when they feel connected to the bigger picture. As a leader, I want my team to understand the north star, but also feel like their ideas and contributions play a real role in helping us get there. That sense of inclusion creates ownership, and ownership is what drives great work.
I also really value collaborative leadership. Some of my favorite moments are working sessions with my team, where everyone has a voice, ideas are being built on in real time, and we leave with more clarity than we came in with. Those moments are energizing, but they are also practical. They help teams move faster, solve problems better, and feel proud of what they are creating together.
What has been the biggest challenge in your career so far?
The biggest challenge in my career so far was breaking into the beauty industry.
I had built my career in ecommerce across apparel, footwear, and consumer goods, and while I loved the work, I always knew beauty was where I ultimately wanted to be. The hard part was that so many beauty roles required prior beauty experience, which created a bit of a catch-22: I needed beauty experience to get into beauty, but I needed someone to take a chance on me first.
What that taught me was how to better define the value I brought from outside the industry. Every “no” pushed me to sharpen my story, understand where I could differentiate myself, and prove that ecommerce fundamentals, technical fluency, conversion strategy, and customer behavior are highly transferable. Ultimately, my technical background and ability to connect brand, performance, and digital experience became the thing that helped me break in.
I’m really proud that I kept pursuing it. Once I got into beauty, it felt immediately clear that I had found the industry I was meant to be in.
How has networking contributed to your professional growth and success?
Networking has played a huge role in my professional growth because so much of career success comes down to the relationships you build and continue to nurture.
Earlier in my career, I was offered a role with a team and company I was really excited about, but the timing was not right. My husband had just been transferred across the state for an opportunity he could not pass up, so I made the difficult decision to turn the role down. Even though I could not accept at the time, I felt a strong connection with the team and made a point to stay in touch.
Eventually, we found ourselves back in San Francisco, and I reached back out. That relationship led to an opportunity to join the team as an ecommerce consultant, and later, I came on full time. It became a career-defining role for me.
That experience taught me that networking is not just about meeting people. It is about building genuine relationships, staying connected, and treating every interaction with care because the right opportunity may come back around in a different season.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-beren-a4a53360
Instagram: @missrereberen
